When Summer Ends

by Jessica Pennington

  And it should hurt my feelings, but it doesn’t sound like an insult the way he says it. It sounds endearing. Have I actually won over Aiden Emerson—Riverton’s grumpiest golden boy—with my weirdness?

  “I’ve been told I’m delightfully weird,” I say.

  “Here, it’s all yours.” He hands me the stack of paddles and I carry them down toward the boats lined up at each dock. Of course eventually I’m going to have to do that first awkward presentation while reading off the script Ellis gave us this morning, but not today. I may be wearing the world’s ugliest khaki shorts, and I may have just had a total mental breakdown in front of a really hot guy, but at least I don’t have to humiliate myself in front of tourists. It’s my lucky day.

  Chapter

  Six

  OLIVIA

  “Olivia Henry?” the voice calls out from the deck, and an older man in brown slacks almost stumbles as his feet hit the loose gravel. Before I have a chance to answer, the local TV news van is pulling up in front of the Depot and car doors slam, more feet hitting the deck. Oh god.

  The man now next to me has his phone held out, probably the way he held his tape recorder out twenty years ago, except now it’s just a black-and-green screen. Behind him, Ellis has emerged from the building, looking unnerved.

  “Exciting day,” the man says, gleaming at me as if I’m the bucket of fried chicken his wife never lets him near. He adjusts his glasses and then his eyes meet mine. “How do you feel about your mother’s big win, Olivia?” When I don’t say anything, he tries again. “Will you be celebrating with her tonight?”

  “She doesn’t live here,” I say. Not that I would be having dinner with her if she did, but it’s the truth. I take a step back and almost trip on the stump podium. “I’m not sure why you’re here.” Yes, my mother is from Riverton, but she hasn’t lived here in years, doesn’t live here now, and basically has nothing to do with me. Why am I the one being asked questions?

  “It’s very sweet,” the man says, looking at me with soft eyes. “A woman wins the lottery, and all she wants is to win back her daughter.” He takes a few more steps toward me, his phone coming at me like a cattle prod. “Quite a story.”

  “It is,” I say. It is quite a story. “I don’t really want to talk about it, I really just found—” But before I can finish my thought, a primped woman in a pencil skirt and a man with thick black glasses are crossing the gravel toward me. A camera hangs at the man’s side, dangling from his hand. The woman totters through the gravel, her heels sinking and sliding.

  Ellis puts a hand out toward her just as she slips again. “Let me help you there.” He gives me an apologetic glance. “Seems like a bit of a liability. We don’t want any broken ankles.” He wipes sweat off of his forehead and gently touches the front of his hair, which is finally slipping from its perch after all these hours. “I can’t be on the news looking like this,” he says.

  “Olivia!” The woman says my name like I’m a long-lost friend or the waitress at her favorite café, where she gets her coffee for free. She waves her hand at me and for a second I forget that she’s actually the hunter and I’m the prey, trapped out here on the gravel, my bike on the other side of the TV and newspaper reporters now advancing on me. How did this happen? My mom can’t even get winning the lottery right. They should be camped out at her house, not mine.

  “Why are you here? My mom lives in Tampa now.” Or Tempe. Or … maybe it was Tulsa. I shake my head. “She doesn’t live here.”

  The man shakes his head, “We just interviewed her at her hotel. Lovely woman.”

  Lovely woman. That’s my mother, all right.

  “Can we just get a quick clip, maybe ask you a few questions?” the nosy woman asks. Ellis is still escorting her toward me, but she’s breaking free, finding her footing in the gravel, picking up speed. I don’t have anywhere left to go. Behind me are the kayak racks, the garage bays are on my right, and the river flanks my left.

  “I don’t … I just—” I’m having flashbacks of standing up in sophomore-year speech class, all eyes turned on me as I presented a speech on my family. I made a little tree that plotted everyone out, put in pictures of Aunt Sarah and my Oma, gave Emma and Zander their own honorary branches. I talked about how you choose your family. And the entire time I stood there, my stomach was in my throat. I don’t have a problem giving prepared speeches, I just don’t like to talk about my family. People want to hear about how much you look up to your dad, and why you want to be like your mom. But I don’t know who he is, and I don’t want to be anything like her. That’s not who my family is.

  “Olivia.” My name rings out again, but not from the direction I’m expecting. It’s coming from the river, from Aiden, who is stepping down into a canoe, waving a hand at me as I back-step from the reporters.

  What is he doing?

  “Olivia.” He nods toward the paddle lying on the dock.

  I run toward him and grab it. As I step down into the canoe, it tips and bobs under me. Aiden is pushing off with his paddle before my butt even hits the metal seat, and seconds later we’re gliding through the water.

  “Oh my god.” I don’t know what else to say.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, that was—” What was that?

  “Completely unacceptable behavior at work?” he says.

  Shit. “Were there customers standing around?” Am I losing my job on the first day? “I didn’t know—crap.”

  “I’m kidding, Olivia. Jeez.”

  “Oh. Right. Obviously,” I say, trying to smooth the edge of an emotional breakdown out of my voice.

  Our paddles slice through the water, and I wonder where we’re headed. Our own pickup location is about two miles down the river at Jasper’s Beach, just before the river meets Lake Michigan. A beautiful, scenic paddle, perfect for beginners and experts alike.

  The silence is making me nervous. “Are you afraid you’ll get fired? You did steal a canoe and an employee while on the clock.”

  “I didn’t steal you.” Aiden laughs softly. “And my parents own River Depot.”

  He’s the boss’s kid? “Oh … that’s cool.”

  “It’s not going to be like that,” he says.

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m going to report back on work at the dinner table.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  We keep paddling, the water quiet and calming around us as it laps up against the metal body of our boat. “Thanks for the rescue. That was … weird.”

  “No problem.” His voice betrays his lingering curiosity, but he stops there.

  I suck at small talk, even though I’m always diving headfirst into it. Because on the one hand, when I’ve just met someone I don’t know what I want to know about them yet. I don’t even know where to start. And on the other hand—this is the writer in me—I want to know everything. Because everybody has a million things that make them who they are. If Aiden were a stranger I had been sent to interview by Lake Lights, I know exactly what I’d ask him:

  What did it feel like to get hit in the face with a line drive?

  Why did you quit the team?

  What are your plans now?

  Tell me about the fight.

  Wes Masters, a senior on the team, claims that he saw Aiden and some random guy get into a fistfight behind the Amoco gas station last week. No one else saw it though. But it fits with Aiden’s current aesthetic—bruised up, not talking to his friends. Wes is a good guy, I’m not sure why he’d lie.

  If I didn’t know Aiden it would be easy to pick him apart. But as is, he’s my ex-boyfriend’s former better-half teammate, and he’s sitting quietly behind me. It’s weird having someone sitting behind you in complete silence. I bet there aren’t a lot of first dates happening at River Depot—this seating arrangement would be a nightmare. As we continue down the river, the silence is killing me—all I can think about is what my butt must look like in these atrocious shorts. Or that at any moment he’s goi
ng to ask me how it’s possible to not know your own mother won the lottery. And that’s a lot to unpack right now, because I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that my mother won the lottery. I know lotteries are just luck, not merit, but seriously, luck couldn’t have picked one of those moms you see in viral stories who donates her own kidney to her kid while going through chemo and working three jobs? Come on, Luck.

  “Are you and Ellis close?” He doesn’t answer right away, and I wonder if it’s weird that I asked. “I noticed the last name—he said you’re cousins.”

  “Yeah. We are, actually. We’re nine days apart, so we’ve pretty much been best friends since birth.”

  “Cousin-twins,” I say before thinking, because they do sort of look alike, though Ellis doesn’t have the athletic build Aiden does, and Aiden doesn’t share Ellis’s fabulous hair.

  He laughs. “Sort of, yeah.”

  Around us the trees have turned from oaks to pines. It’s the first time I’ve been down the river—or at least the first time I remember. It’s gorgeous. I pause my paddling to look down into the water, so clear it’s hard to even tell how deep it is. There are patches of weeds here and there, waving along with the current, but for the most part it’s covered in pebbles. Tiny little translucent fish swim in pulsing groups.

  In the distance I can make out the faint hum of cars—they must be just on the other side of the trees, on the road that runs along the river.

  “You’re going to need to focus for a minute.” Aiden’s voice is teasing and I pull my eyes away from the water to see a concrete structure stretched across the width of the river in front of us. A small opening in the center has a gate overhead that hangs like the blade of a guillotine. “Paddle gently, just make sure we don’t clip it.”

  I dip my paddle back into the water as we slowly ascend. “What is it?”

  “No one knows. It just showed up one day.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that.” He laughs. “I’m nervous.”

  “Why are you nervous?”

  “Because you probably hate me, and I don’t blame you, but we have to work together all summer, so it would be really great if you didn’t.” He sounds nervous, as the words rush out.

  “Why would I hate you?”

  “Because I screwed over Zander? Because he probably hates me too?”

  “He pretty much does, yes.” I keep my eyes on the concrete barrier we’re quickly approaching. “But I don’t. His problems aren’t mine.” Not anymore, I think. “Plus, you just rescued me. So even if I did hate you—which I don’t—I’d have to forgive you now. Those are the rules.”

  “The rules of what?” he asks.

  “I don’t know—life? Or books, at least.”

  “I didn’t realize books had rules.”

  “They don’t have rules, per se, just expectations. Like, if someone rescues someone, the reader expects that one of three things will happen.”

  We keep paddling, I don’t know that I’m actually helping, but I dip my paddle in anyway, and if it doesn’t hit the side of the canoe, I consider it a victory.

  “What are the three things?” he says impatiently, as if he’s been waiting for this very important information.

  “Right. Well, they can become best friends, they can fall in love, or … they’ll end up killing them.”

  Silence stretches between us, until Aiden’s curious voice slices through it. “Which of the three do you think happens for us?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see, I guess. But I’m really hoping I don’t kill you; I look horrible in orange.”

  * * *

  I don’t know how long we’ve been out here, but my arm is sore, and there’s a little raw spot where a blister is forming on my thumb. My phone is back in my purse, sitting on the floor of the garage. It feels like we just got out on the water, but also it feels like I’ve seen a million trees, and three different sand dunes that look alike, and around every bend in the river it just opens up to more and more blue ahead of us. It doesn’t feel like the river is anywhere close to its end.

  “We should probably head back soon,” Aiden says, but he doesn’t sound very concerned. A perk of being the boss’s kid, probably. It’s not his first day, and I doubt he’s getting fired.

  I moan, not wanting to think about going back to real life.

  He laughs. “Okay, fine. Heads or tails?”

  “Heads. Always.”

  “Okay, heads we go to the right, and I show you the super-secret route through Loon Lake, buying you an extra fifteen minutes.”

  “And tails?”

  “Tails we head back,” he says.

  I can’t stand the idea of going back to face the reporters. To the stares from customers and the A-Team. And soon I’m going to have to think about what the reporter meant when he said he interviewed my mother at her hotel.

  I hear a metallic skitter, and Aiden stops paddling for a few strokes.

  “Lucky, lucky,” he says. “Two for two.”

  Finally, something goes my way.

  * * *

  One more blister later, we’re picking up speed, finally working together and starting to glide smoothly through the water. Loon Lake is spreading out in front of us, tiny and almost perfectly round. It’s nothing like the other inland lakes around here that buzz with boats and jet skis; there are no houses, no cabins, no docks. Scrawny, leafless trees are dense around the perimeter. They should be ugly, with their naked gray branches and thin, barkless trunks, but they’re strangely beautiful.

  “Do you think Ellis knows my name?” I ask. My hands hurt and I’m barely paddling.

  Aiden laughs. “Because he calls you New Girl?”

  “Yeah. I mean, he does know my name, right?”

  Aiden’s voice is gentle. “He definitely knows your name.”

  I groan. “I’m never going to remember everyone. I don’t know how you even manage to hire that many people with A-names.”

  Aiden laughs and the sound drifts up softly, caught on the wind rushing past us. “I can’t decide if I want to tell you or not.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Promise not to tell Ellis I told you…”

  “Okay…”

  “Those are all fake names—Alex, Andy, Allison and Avery—Ellis just wanted to mess with you for being late. Don’t tell him I told you though.”

  “Oh my god, and he seems so nice!” I’m joking of course, but also, what the hell? Day one and already I’m the fresh meat to torment?

  “He is, he’s just trying to make work fun. He’s been telling me for years about the games he makes up for everyone at work—stuff to take their mind off the fact that it’s ninety degrees out and they’re on the verge of heat stroke.”

  “Oh god,” I mutter. Is this job really so horrible we have to have games and pranks to distract us from the horror of it?

  Aiden laughs. “Seriously, I’ve only worked here for a week now, and it’s fun. I’m sure you’ll have a great summer.”

  “I thought your parents owned this place. You haven’t worked here before?”

  “Nah. In the past my summers were busy. This summer’s the first time I’ve had the time to do it,” he says.

  “Well, I won’t tell anyone I know about the name thing, but I can’t promise I won’t have some fun with it.”

  “I look forward to it.” His voice sounds relaxed now, like the Aiden I expected to work with. The one everyone is always raving about. He’s such a nice guy. Surprisingly nice. Well, finally, I’m surprised in a good way. Because my mom just won the lottery; I’m on my first canoe trip, with no real destination in mind; and the river is in control. Fate is in control. And I think, for just this summer, I’m going to let it take charge. Let it push me along, like the river’s current, through June and July and August. I’m done being the one worrying about everything. It hasn’t been working out too great for me, anyway. All of my careful planning,
and what did I get: the perfect internship? The perfect boyfriend? A mom who gives a crap? I didn’t get any of it. So screw them. And screw plans. This summer, I’m going to do what Emma said, and let loose. I’ll let fate decide—one coin flip at a time.

  Chapter

  Seven

  AIDEN

  Total trip time: two hours. We missed lunch, and Ellis seemed irritated that we were gone for so long, but he’ll get over it. Luckily, The Grill was slow and Beth could come work the launch with him, so things weren’t a total disaster when we finally arrived back at the docks. Ellis tried to pull a power play on me and have me work late to make up for my “joy ride” with Olivia, but there was no way I was missing my meeting with Mr. Winters. Not when it’s the first time I get to show him some of the pieces I’m working on for my portfolio review.

  Even in the summer, when everything is put away and the windows have been closed for weeks, Mr. Winters’s classroom smells the same. It’s this weird mix of acrylic paint, wet clay, hot glue—even the paintbrushes have their own special smell that’s mixed in. I love the smell of it. In this room I feel like Aiden, not Emerson. I pull a sheet out of my black portfolio and stare at the smudged lines of charcoal. That’s what life looks like most of the time now—like a smudged charcoal drawing—soft around the edges, blurry and unfocused.

  I knew I could get here before Mr. Winters and his door would be open. It always is. His is one of the few classrooms that open up into the open-air courtyard. The school is set up like a horseshoe, with a narrow opening at the back of the building—where the loading area for the stage is—that opens up to the courtyard. It’s common knowledge amongst the art students that Winters leaves his door unlocked. I heard a rumor once that it was so students could sleep in the little back supply room if they needed somewhere to go. Some say it’s because Winters slept there when he and his wife were separated and he just got in the habit of leaving it unlocked. Luckily for him, the students love him and no one would ever turn him in to the principal, but you’d think they’d catch on after senior prank every year. Don’t they wonder how everyone gets in the school? Maybe they think it’s one of the coaches who are equally loose with access to the gym—half of the baseball team has a key to get into the weight room.